Get over the Cold War, Dennis, the Stalinists are not serious contenders for anything. The CPUSA is a Democratic Party booster club, and the RCP is a social association of single-issue activists. I am all for open forums, and I was when I was a Marxist too, but it is silly and futile to try to straightjacket the form or manner of political change into any specific structure. We have no idea what form impetus for radical change will take in the future, except that it will be something unexpected. If we could anticipate it, we'd be doing it, hmm? You may say, well, I will not do anything but participate in a constitutional convention. Well, fine, if one occurs, I am sure people will be glad of your partucipation. If the radical impulse is a litle leess formalistic, you will be left on the sidelines. That is OK with me too, not that anyone cares what I think.
To get some sense of how out-of-anyone's control these things are, read Alfred Doeblin's great November 1918, a nevel of the German revolution, in which he depicts, in histprically accurate (far as I can tell) terms, how the German revolution not only blindsided the mainstream SD who opposed it and ukltimately destroyed it, killing its leaders, but also surprised and ran over those soon-to-be-martyred leaders, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, who found themselves helplessly following from the front. You might as well fight see the sea with a pitchfork. In the end, the only way to dovert it into other courses was with bayonets and bullets. That is what the SDPD chose.
I'm a bourgeois liberal myself, but one who remembers that we too have a revolutionary tradition -- 1776, 1789, 1848 -- indeed, closer to home, 1863-77.
jks
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